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Abraham Mansbach

This article discusses the form in which the “I-We“ relationship is configured in Israel, in terms of its intersection with democracy. It argues that what is usually considered as a sine qua non for a robust democracy, namely, an agonistic tension between the “I,“ that is our individual uniqueness, privacy, and personal liberty, and the “We,“ that is our collective liberty and autonomy, is absent from Israeli society. Moreover, when we examine the distribution, consumption, use, and negotiation of power in the sphere of everyday life in Israel, we find that “the military,“ its discourse, and its practices suffuse precisely those spaces where the social fabric as well as identities are being shaped. The conclusion is that the Israeli society is actually drifting away from democracy in an increasingly oppressive erasure of personal identity claims, as well as of their discourse and praxis.

Victoria C. Ramenzoni and David Yoskowitz

After Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, governmental organizations have
placed the development of metrics to quantify social impacts, resilience, and community
adaptation at the center of their agendas. Following the premise that social indicators
provide valuable information to help decision makers address complex interactions
between people and the environment, several interagency groups in the United States
have undertaken the task of embedding social metrics into policy and management.
While this task has illuminated important opportunities for consolidating social and
behavioral disciplines at the core of the federal government, there are still significant
risks and challenges as quantification approaches move forward. In this article, we discuss
the major rationale underpinning these efforts, as well as the limitations and conflicts encountered in transitioning research to policy and application. We draw from a
comprehensive literature review to explore major initiatives in institutional scenarios
addressing community well-being, vulnerability, and resilience in coastal and ocean
resource management agencies.

Between Religion, Regulation, and Globalization

Johan Fischer

program to regulate slaughtering and meat processing as well as commercial food manufacturing. The complexity of contemporary food production means that individuals cannot ascertain the kashrut of raw materials and products. Instead, large national

The Social Construction of Reductionist Thought and Practice

Bruce Kapferer

The argument I present here is that the ‘retreat’ in the social sciences from concepts
of the social and society (and their reformulation in other terms) is intimately
connected to an intensification of reductionist thought and practice. But
this, as I will explain, is not merely a feature of the social sciences (where
reductionist argument appears to play an increasing role). It could almost be
described as a movement (a social movement?) extending well beyond the
human and social sciences where the public at large, as it were, is not only
being more exposed to non-social even anti-social arguments of a reductionist
kind, but appears to be actively accepting and desirous of them. The idea of the
social as integral to understanding is being bypassed or, if it is maintained as a
key point of reference, emptied of much of the import it once had. The social
has become a vacated category. Thus, there is often a shift away from a concern
with social relational and interactive structures, as well as institutional and
organizational formations. The complexities of their internal dynamics, their
structurating processes, and the forces of their effects on human action within
and beyond them have increasingly been neglected in the social sciences.

Ruth Hatlapa and Andrei S. Markovits

There is no question that with Barack Obama the United States has a rock star as president who—behooving rock stars—is adored and admired the world over. His being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize nary a year after being elected president and barely ten months into his holding the office, testified to his global popularity rather than his actual accomplishments, which may well turn out to be unique and formidable. And it is equally evident that few—if any—American presidents were more reviled, disdained and distrusted all across the globe than George W. Bush, Obama's immediate predecessor. Indeed, the contrast between the hatred for the former and the admiration for the latter might lead to the impression that the negative attitudes towards America and Americans that was so prevalent during the Bush years have miraculously morphed into a lovefest towards the United States on the part of the global public. This paper—concentrating solely on the German case but representing a larger research project encompassing much of Western Europe—argues that love for Obama and disdain for America are not only perfectly compatible but that, in fact, the two are merely different empirical manifestations of a conceptually singular view of America. Far from being mutually exclusive, these two strains are highly congruent, indeed complementary and symbiotic with each other.

Triggering Critical Reflexive Stances on Ritual Action in Togo

Marie Daugey

worshipping this deity. However, this does not necessarily mean that this priest has the final word in a debate. Since the well-being of a whole village is, in some cases, thought to depend on this type of sacrifice, if there are doubts concerning a priest

Doing Ritual While Thinking about It?

Emma Gobin

ritual rules or scripts is to be understood in the broadest possible sense, applicable to what anthropology generally refers to as ‘oral traditions’ as well. An attempt to articulate these opposing viewpoints may seem analytically somewhat perilous

Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone

Alongside recent world-historical dates such as 11 September 2001, we would place 15 February 2003. On that day, around 10 million people—some estimates are much higher—demonstrated on the streets of the world's cities in opposition to the US war on Iraq, then being merely threatened. Sartre's study of the elements of history in Critique of Dialectical Reason and its unpublished ethical sequel, Morality and History, illuminate, and are illuminated by, the movements that contest today's global system. From the Critique, we'll engage his notions of negative universality as threat of death and the "fusing" of "series" into "groups" as response. From Morality and History, we'll take "integral humanity" as a goal and standard; it seems to us built into the global act of February 15 and into the wider movement of which that day was a moment. After comparing a Sartrean take on February 15 with the famous Habermas-Derrida appeal inspired by that day, we'll close with some reciprocal illuminations between Sartre's theories and Zapatista practice.

This issue of the International Journal of Social Quality looks at the socio-political and socio-cultural dimensions of sustainability in social quality analysis. Some articles refer to the notion of sustainability, which stimulates transformative changes in society, and the consequences for the explicit or implicit integration with the sociopolitical dimension and the environmental dimension, as well as for the well-being of people all over the world, thus the socio-cultural dimension. Two interesting questions are, first, how can new forms of public participation and democratic practices and policies to stimulate environmental protection be developed, transforming the socio-political and legal context in order to contribute to the development of overall sustainability? Second, how can community involvement and new communication technologies be stimulated, which can be productive for the adequate transformation of the socio-cultural and welfare dimensions? Both issues were addressed in the Aarhus Convention of 1998, which highlighted information on environmental matters as a key right for citizens and a condition for effective public participation in decision-making processes. The concept of “social empowerment” connects the dimensions and – with reference to the four normative factors of social quality as well – delivers arguments for changing the dominant production, distribution and consumption systems and patterns.

vitalism” (p. 32)—a vitalism in which the central nervous system came to be understood as the key to health. In this conception, the spine was not merely a conduit for the diseases of other organs but was understood as the source of well-being or disease